Two thick hardcovers with dust jackets. 996 & 1208 pages.

The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2001) was assembled and edited by the American literary critic Zachary Leader. It is a collection of more than 800 letters from Amis to many different friends and professional acquaintances from 1941 until shortly before his death in 1995.\

In this, the authorized biography, Zachary Leader argues that Kingsley Amis was not only the finest comic novelist of his generation, but the dominant figure of post-war British writing.

Drawing not only on interviews with a range of Amiss friends, relatives, fellow writers, students and colleagues, many of them never before consulted, but also on almost a thousand previously unpublished letters, Leaders biography will for the first time give a full picture of Amiss childhood, school-days, life as a teacher, critic, polemicist, professional author, husband, father and lover. He explores Amiss fears and phobias, and the role that drink played in his life. And of course he pays due attention to Amiss work.